How did this project come about?
"What is possible must first be rooted in what can be imagined."
“Allowing intellect [to] inhale more deeply. Allowing the skin to breathe for the mind.”
Michael Berger, Companion Moon, Substack 4/25/2026
Is this a good time to imagine a new way of constituting ourselves as a society? Can we* think together outside the box for a while and dust the cobwebs out of our collective brain? What would it be like to put mutual care within the living organism of Earth at the heart of our society? Can we learn from the self-organizing complexity that characterizes other biological communities and ecosystems? What if biomimicry extends to human self-governance? Could we find the words for a constitution that feels more, like, natural?
I'll jump into the conversation by giving tentative expression to my five decades-long yearning for a structure of law that is a better fit for an emerging worldview. Informed by Thomas Berry's insight that the Universe is the First Revelation of God, ritualized by the inclusive Sufi practice of Universal Worship, spirituality itself emerges from Earth our only Home, also alive and intelligent. There must be a way to put all this into words so that we might abide together within it. By spirituality I mean to suggest a shared container for our most cherished values, the ones that come naturally to any earthling paying attention to how forests thrive (or do not). Can Nature be our guide, now that we understand more?
The Founders had not encountered The Universe Story, not to mention The Dancing Wu-Li Masters, Lynne McTaggart's The Field or the more recent Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came Alive. Nor had they anticipated the devastating underside of Manifest Destiny that grew lurking under their favorite paradigm. That left them bereft of ancient wisdom already thriving on this land for millennia. What if we revisit the original democracy that sprang from this land, The Great Law of Peace, and learn from the great suffering the early peoples in that part of this land endured and transcended? We might notice elements that eluded Ben Franklin (hints: Nature's role, that of women - and of Peace). There are other mentors the Founders missed, including Nature herself.
Ian McGilchrist once said something like, "Everything that makes life worthwhile is implicit; if it is made explicit, it is degraded." Nature is everything that makes life worthwhile. So we must tread lightly when trying to make explicit those patterns in Nature that we humans would do well to emulate. Words! How do we translate living by Nature's rules into words?
We've learned that we cannot legislate morality. Perhaps we can learn not to structure conditions that privilege sociopathic greed, genocide, and ecocide. (For instructive graphics, see Camila Vergara's Systemic Corruption.) If humans come into the world naturally loving, as recent science supports, what conditions can we structure for self-governance to support, and not discourage, our basic orientation?
We wake up in - not an era of change, but a change of era, as both recent popes have noted. Of the U.S. Constitution, Jill Lepore writes, "The beginning has come to an end." Then, Rebecca Solnit publishes a book, The Beginning Comes After the End. This website is concerned with that transition, with the hope that it become a true transformation.
Or maybe the time for a complete redesign has not yet come. If the transition we face is a bit tumultuous, we might gather in small neighborhoods and see what we can do about it, together. Some folks, somewhere, will come up with something that works for them. We may find the effort a meaningful one ourselves. So I'm starting with a People's Resolution, and including some Drafts by Others as well as My Works in Progress.
For dreaming a new world, once I asked Claude AI to help me face the possible scope of an actual new constitution for an actual place - one starting with values that, off the top of my head, I would prefer. The result shows that no one being can speak for all. We are in this together.
As much as possible, let's turn our attention to the lived experience of earthlings in community, as documented by naturalists and poets. Those who pay attention can help us see more clearly.
*Most of the time when I say "we" I generally mean U.S. citizens immersed in modernity. As part of this "we," I feel that, in important ways, we lag behind human earthlings from other cultures, especially those Indigenous to this land prior to colonization and those Indigenous to other lands prior to forced migration and enslavement here. I do hope that, without appropriation, we can learn from those elders and their descendants.
Libby Comeaux, April 30, 2026